


You Can't Hurt Me Anymore

by cuthbert



Category: Final Fantasy VIII
Genre: Minor Character(s), Minor canon divergence, Other, Post-Canon, Pre-Relationship, balamb garden treated orphans as cannon fodder, improvised surgical techniques, non-consensual medical implications, with major consequences
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-08
Updated: 2018-02-08
Packaged: 2019-03-15 12:50:59
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 991
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13613748
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cuthbert/pseuds/cuthbert
Summary: Post-game. The former Balamb Garden Disciplinary Committee is on a train, starting to realize they've got the whole world ahead of them. Fujin's got some unfinished business to attend to, though.(Inspired by and titled after the song by The Hiders. Disciplinary Polycule is hinted at but not the focus, so no ship tag. Rated as it is because... well, this is a quick little thing that grew out of some really dark speculation involving how much control B-Garden's ward-students had of their own bodies.)





	You Can't Hurt Me Anymore

    They were on the train out of Balamb, about two hours from the border, when Fujin straightened up as though she’d just remembered something.

    She had, of course. Rather, she’d never been able to forget something, and had now allowed herself to realize there was no reason to keep it there. Still moving urgently and just as focused, she carefully slipped out of her jacket. Across the compartment, Seifer looked exaggeratedly disappointed at the simple tank top she wore underneath; she narrowed her eye and he grinned. Raijin closed the magazine he’d been reading and looked between the two of them, more confused than worried.   
  
    “You need something?” he asked, as she fished a small first-aid kit from one of her jacket’s pockets.

    She nodded. “KNIFE,” she said, too keyed up to force herself into a quieter range. This was long, long overdue. She could’ve had Kadowaki handle this in a nice sterile office if she’d kept her head back at the Garden before they left.  
  
    Immediately, Raijin moved to pull one of his boot knives free. Seifer grabbed his wrist before he could hand it over. “For what?” he asked, leaving unspoken the “ _I’m_ the suicidal-crazy one” writ large on his face, suddenly worried.

    "IMPLANT.”   
  
    Seifer blanched. “They put trackers in you, too?” Somehow he looked younger when he looked scared.   
  
    Raijin made a sort of whining noise at that. “Well, you’n’Squall weren’t the only ones gettin’ sent out off-books, y’know?”   
  
    “No, I know, I definitely know, just… Fuu, that’s not going to come out with a pocketknife. I fucked up my leg trying that with the second one they gave me,” Seifer said, his hand nevertheless dropping from Raijin’s wrist to his knee. He was a master of subtlety, their leader was. Truly.   
  
    “REMOVED TRACKER. ONE LEFT,” she said, and flexed her left arm. A fine cylinder was visible under the skin, parallel to her bicep.

    “Let me help,” Raijin said, tucking the knife back where it had come from and giving Seifer’s hand a quick squeeze. “Oughta have tweezers to grab the damn thing, guess it’ll have to be a long cut… you got alcohol wipes in the kit?”

    It was almost like old times, again, almost as much as that moment when she’d kicked him off the pier so Seifer would laugh and not sulk. Here they were on a train, and he was kneeling in front of her going through a first aid kit, and Seifer had hopped over and was sitting touch-starved-close next to her trying to be casual. She held his hand as Raijin made the cut, much more for his sake than her own. They’d never know what the Witch had done to him, most likely, but he’d come out the other side of the past few months with a much stronger aversion to blood and medical procedures than he’d had before. That said enough, really.

    A quick Cure and she barely had a scar. “Slippery little piece o’ crap, but I guess they didn’t want you taking it out yourself, yeah?” She blinked, not parsing the little metal cylinder Raijin now held before her for what it was for an instant. “Figured you’d want to… dispose of it yourself, y’know?”

    She smiled, baring her teeth in what wasn’t really a grin, and took it from him. He hopped up on the bench seat next to her, throwing an arm over her shoulders to rest a hand on Seifer’s shoulder, and she stared at the implant with a narrowed eye. She held it between her thumb and forefinger, braced like a bridge between them, and only considered that it might not snap in the instant before she applied pressure.

    For a moment, it seemed that it would break after all, and some feral part of her felt triumphant. Then it _bent_ , and the scowl on her face must have been something impressive, because both of her idiot boys couldn’t help laughing. Without warning, the stupid little piece of metal-wrapped plastic _sprang loose from her hand_ , and what had been stifled laughter from either side of her became helpless giggling to one side and a near-cackle from the other. She didn’t see where it landed and didn’t bother to look; they were in a compartment that had seen better days, and it wasn’t as though the cleaning crew hadn’t seen worse.

    She elbowed Raijin, as he was a closer and bigger target. “BOTH. ASSES.”

    There was something about that sheepish grin she turned and found aimed at her that could still, after all they’d been forced through, give her pause. He may have been a big lunk sometimes, but there was nothing truly stupid about Rai. “Sorry, I just… your _face,_ I couldn’t help it!”

    “What he said!” Seifer wheezed, and he raised a hand in apology when she snapped to look at him. “Looked like you wanted to murder it and then it went _flying and -_ ” He broke off into helpless coughlike cackling laughter again.

    She gave them both a few moments to calm down, and considered how to phrase what she wanted to say. She was still too tense to manage the low rasp she had to use to talk at length. One word at a time would have to do. The silence was almost awkward by the time she spoke again.

    “MINE,” she said, tapping her breastbone with her free hand. “MINE. AGAIN. NOW.” She glanced right, and Seifer looked downright grave. To her left, Raijin looked unusually somber. She hadn’t meant to bring them both down, but… “MINE,” she repeated. “NOT GARDEN’S.”

    “Yeah,” Raijin said, nodding. “Yeah, I get you.”

    She looked back at Seifer and something in her felt like it snapped the way she’d wanted to see the implant do. His face was still grave, and his eyes were suspiciously wet, and he was blinking almost frantically. “Not Garden’s,” he said, softly. “You’re right. Not Garden’s. We’re free.”

**Author's Note:**

> I'm not saying providing your army of teenage soldiers with birth control is a bad thing, but I'm for bodily autonomy as a basic human right. 
> 
> The tracker thing and off-books missions are not, strictly speaking, canon-compliant. But I warned you in the summary this grew out of something dark. When the practical half of your "school"'s graduation exam is being thrown into battle, well... one wonders what exactly was done with the students the rest of the year. Drills and controlled-environment training aren't enough, and while the Training Area is well-stocked, it's still not an actual battlefield. Then there's that mention of an annual memorial service if you look around in one of the computer terminals.... 
> 
> Anyway you can find the song here: https://thehiders.bandcamp.com/track/you-cant-hurt-me-anymore Please throw some money at the band if you can, they're local to me and all good people.


End file.
